<<More Joel on Software>> 利诱管理法

利诱管理法

Joke: A poor Jew lived in the shtetl in 19th century Russia. A Cossack comes up to him on horseback.

笑话一则：一位穷苦的犹太人住在19世纪俄国的犹太村庄里，这天，一位骑着马的哥萨克骑兵来到他的身边。

“What are you feeding that chicken?” asks the Cossack.

骑兵问道：「你拿什麼东西给那只小鸡吃？」

“Just some bread crumbs,” replies the Jew.

这犹太人答道：「只是一些面包屑而已。」

“How dare you feed a fine Russian chicken such lowly food!” says the Cossack, and hits the Jew with a stick.

骑兵愤怒的叫道：「你竟然敢餵带有优良血统的俄罗斯小鸡吃如此低等的食物？」接着给这犹太人吃了紮实的一棍。

The next day the Cossack comes back. “Now what are you feeding that chicken?” ask the Jew.

隔日，这位骑兵回来再次问道：「现在你都拿什麼餵小鸡？」

“Well, I give him three courses. There's freshly cut grass, fine sturgeon caviar, and a small bowl of heavy cream sprinkled with imported French chocolate truffles for dessert.”

「是这样的，我给他三道菜：有新鲜的现割牧草、高等鱼子酱和一小碗混合着重奶油与法国巧克力块糖的饭后点心。」

“Idiot!” says the Cossack, beating the Jew with a stick. “How dare you waste good food on a lowly chicken!”

「大白癡！」这骑兵叫道。「你这麼好胆，竟然浪费如此高级的食物给低等的小鸡！」然后又痛扁了这犹太人一顿。

On the third day, the Cossack again asks, “What are you feeding that chicken?”

第三天，骑兵再次问道：「你现在餵小鸡吃什麼？」

“Nothing!” pleads the Jew. “I give him a kopeck and he buys whatever he wants.”

「没餵！」犹太人恭敬答道。「我给他一戈比(译注：前苏联的货币单位)，让牠自己买喜欢的东西吃。」

(pause for laughter)

（期待着笑声）

(no?)

（没有？）

(ba dum dum)

（巴啦啦）

(still no laughter)

（还是没笑声）

(oh well).

（好吧）
09candy.JPG

I use the term “Econ 101” a little bit tongue-in-cheek. For my non-American readers: most US college departments have a course numbered “101” which is the basic introductory course for any field. Econ 101 management is the style used by people who know just enough economic theory to be dangerous.

我使用这词汇：Econ 101是有点不正经。这里要先对非美国的读者澄清一下：对大部分的美国大学学院的课程来说，若其带有课程码101，则代表它是该领域的基础入门课程。因此Econ 101 management（后文皆称为「利诱管理法」）用来指称那些对於经济学了解程度不足，其误解却恰足以造成伤害的管理方法。

The Econ 101 manager assumes that everyone is motivated by money, and that the best way to get people to do what you want them to do is to give them financial rewards and punishments to create incentives.

利诱管理法假定每个人都会被金钱所驱使，所以如果要让人们去做你想要他们做的事情，最好的办法就是以金钱上的报酬和惩罚来创造强烈的动机。

For example, AOL might pay their call-center people for every customer they persuade not to cancel their subscription.

举例来说，美国线上可以加发奖金给他们的客服人员，假若他们能挽回欲退订的客户。

A software company might give bonuses to programmers who create the fewest bugs.

一个软体公司可以加发奖励给写出最少臭虫的程式员。

It works about as well as giving your chickens money to buy their own food.

这方法就如同拿钱给你的小鸡，要他们自己去买想要的食物。（译注：都是推卸自己应负的责任。）

One big problem is that it replaces intrinsic motivation with extrinsic motivation.

一个大的问题是：这方法会导致内在动机被外在动机取代掉。

Intrinsic motivation is your own, natural desire to do things well. People usually start out with a lot of intrinsic motivation. They want to do a good job. They want to help people understand that it's in their best interest to keep paying AOL $24 a month. They want to write less-buggy code.

内在动机是你自己拥有的，是一种想把事情做到尽善尽美的天性。人们一开始总是由许多的内在动机所驱使，他们想要做好分内工作：他们由衷地想要协助其他人了解支付美国线上一个月24美金能带来无穷的乐趣、他们想要写出较少错误的程式码。

Extrinsic motivation is a motivation that comes from outside, like when you're paid to achieve something specific.

外在动机是来自於身外，就像是当你被雇用来做某些特殊的事。

Intrinsic motivation is much stronger than extrinsic motivation. People work much harder at things that they actually want to do. That's not very controversial.

内在动机比起外在动机强大多了，人们会投注心力於他们真正想做的事情上。这是无可置疑的。

But when you offer people money to do things that they wanted to do, anyway, they suffer from something called the Overjustification Effect. “I must be writing bug-free code because I like the money I get for it,” they think, and the extrinsic motivation displaces the intrinsic motivation. Since extrinsic motivation is a much weaker effect, the net result is that you've actually reduced their desire to do a good job. When you stop paying the bonus, or when they decide they don't care that much about the money, they no longer think that they care about bug free code.

但当你付钱请人们做他们原本内心期望要去做的事，他们将陷於「过度酬赏效应」的困境内，他们会认为：「我必须要写出无臭虫的程式，是因为我喜欢这麼做之后所得到的金钱」，接着外在动机便取代了内在动机。由於外在动机相较之下效用相当的弱，最终的结果就是你完全地降低他们对於做好一件工作的意念。当你停发红利，或者他们决定不再在意金钱的多寡时，他们也就不再认为他们还需要关心程式的品质。

Another big problem with Econ 101 management is the tendency for people to find local maxima. They'll find some way to optimize for the specific thing you're paying them, without actually achieving the thing you really want.

另外一个关於利诱管理法大问题则是：人们将会倾向去寻找局部的最大获益，他们会找到一些方法，去寻求最佳化某些你正奖励他们的特殊事情，而不是完成你真正意图要达成的事。

So for example your customer retention specialist, in his desire to earn the bonus associated with maintaining a customer, will drive the customer so crazy that the New York Times will run a big front page story about how nasty your customer “service” is. Although his behavior maximizes the thing you're paying him for (customer retention) it doesn't maximize the thing you really care about (profit). And then you try to reward him for the company profit, say, by giving him 13 shares of stock, and you realize that it's not really something he controls, so it's a waste of time.

举例来说，当你的顾客挽留专家经营一位客户关系时，内心只想着如何赚到红利奖金，这样只会把客户惹毛（译注：惹火了客户，你的客户挽留专家才会有工作做阿... XD），然后以斗大的标题登上纽约时代杂志封面故事，叙说贵公司客服服务是如何让人反感。虽然他的行为可在你要他做的这件事上（挽留客户）表现最佳，但这麼做并不能让你在最关心的事情（利润）上，获得最佳结果。之后当你为了公司利润而试着去奖赏他时（例如给他13份的股票），才会恍然大悟这并非他所控制的事情，一切不过是浪费时间。

When you use Econ 101 management, you're encouraging developers to game the system.

当你使用利诱管理法时，你等於在鼓励开发者玩弄制度。

Suppose you decide to pay a bonus to the developer with the fewest bugs. Now every time a tester tries to report a bug, it becomes a big argument, and usually the developer convinces the tester that it's not really a bug. Or the tester agrees to report the bug “informally” to the developer before writing it up in the bug tracking system. And now nobody uses the bug tracking system. The bug count goes way down, but the number of bugs stays the same.

假定你决定奖赏写出最少臭虫的开发者，那麼当测试人员要回报一个臭虫时，就成了大问题了，开发着通常会说服测试员这并不是真的臭虫；或者测试员会同意，在回报给臭虫管理系统之前，先非正式地提报臭虫给开发人员，那麼现在就没有人会使用臭虫管理系统啦，虽然记录中的臭虫数量降低，但实际的数量并没有任何改变。

Developers are clever this way. Whatever you try to measure, they'll find a way to maximize, and you'll never quite get what you want.

开发者在这方面可是相当有天分的，无论你想要测量什麼，他们总是可以找到方法最大化此数值，而你永远也无法获得真正想要的东西。

Robert Austin, in his book Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations, says there are two phases when you introduce new performance metrics. At first, you actually get what you wanted, because nobody has figured out how to cheat. In the second phase, you actually get something worse, as everyone figures out the trick to maximizing the thing that you're measuring, even at the cost of ruining the company.

Robert Austin在他的「组织效能量测与管理」一书中，提到当你引入新的效能度量机制后，会有两个阶段演变：一开始，由於没有人知道怎麼作_弊，所以你会获得欲度量之物的真实数据；接着，当每个人都知道可最大化欲度量之数据的漏洞后，事情会开始恶化，代价甚至会高到毁了整间公司。

Worse, Econ 101 managers think that they can somehow avoid this situation just by tweaking the metrics. Dr. Austin's conclusion is that you just can't. It never works. No matter how much you try to adjust the metrics to reflect what you think you want, it always backfires.

更糟的是，使用「利诱管理法」的经理认为他们可以微调度量标的来避免这种状况。但Austin博士的结论是你无法做到，这方法从未奏效，无论你如何地调整度量矩阵来反应你认为你想要的，最终终会失败。

The biggest problem with Econ 101 management, though, is that it's not management at all: it's really more of an abdication of management. A deliberate refusal to figure out how things can be made better. It's a sign that management simply doesn't know how to teach people to do better work, so they force everybody in the system to come up with their own way of doing it.

「利诱管理法」最大的问题在於--没错，它其实不是管理，他仅比完全放弃管理还好上一些而已，是一种蓄意放弃去找让事情变得更好的态度＞这是一种警讯：管理者不知道如何去教导人们将工作做的更好，所以他们强迫大家跟随他们自己的方法。

Instead of training developers on techniques of writing reliable code, you just absolve yourself of responsibility by paying them if they do. Now every developer has to figure it out on their own.

你逃避了自己应负的责任，仅仅用金钱来引诱他们，而不是放弃教导开发人员撰写可靠程式码的技术。现在每位开发者他们只能各自努力了。

For more mundane tasks, working the counter at Starbucks or answering phone calls at AOL, it's pretty unlikely that the average worker will figure out a better way of doing things on their own. You can go into any coffee shop in the country and order a short soy caramel latte extra-hot, and you'll find that you have to keep repeating your order again and again: once to the coffee maker, again to the coffee maker when they forgot what you said, and finally to the cashier so they can figure out what to charge you. That's the result of nobody telling the workers a better way. Nobody figures it out, except Starbucks, where the standard training involves a complete system of naming, writing things on cups, and calling out orders which insures that customers only have to specify their drink orders once. The system, invented by Starbucks HQ, works great, but workers at the other chains never, ever come up with it on their own.
09charbucks.JPG

对於第一线的服务工作来说，像是在星巴克的柜台或美国线上的客服专线工作，不太能像一般的工作者一样，能找出较好的工作方式来完成工作。你可以走进任何一家城市里的咖啡店点一杯小杯热豆浆焦糖拿铁，然后你会发现你必须不断复诵所点的餐点，咖啡师傅一遍、如果咖啡师傅忘了就得再复述一遍，最后是收银员好让他们可以知道该怎麼收费。这都根源自没有人告诉这些员工更好的工作方式，直到星巴克...，现在他们的标准训练包含了一整套系统，从命名、在杯子上记下事情、还有大声复诵订单以保证客人只需要点他们的饮料一次即可。这套运作良好的系统是由星巴克总部开发，个别的子系统的工作者，是没有机会靠自己想出这样的方式。

（译注：个人并不认为对於一个企业来说，除了总部之外，就没有人有能力从全局的观点来改善作业方式，以沃尔玛来说，他们的改善计画很多都来自於各个分店，这是因为各分店上至店长下至员工都致力於找出问题、或实验各种不同作法，以提升顾客满意度。至於作者举的点饮料例子，只能说以前咖啡店的店员可能无心於了解客户的困扰所在，也不会重视客户的满意度。）

Your customer service people spend most of the day talking to customers. They don't have the time, the inclination, or the training to figure out better ways to do things. Nobody in the customer retention crew is going to be able to keep statistics and measure which customer retention techniques work best while pissing off the fewest bloggers. They just don't care enough, they're not smart enough, they don't have enough information, and they are too busy with their real job.

你的客服人员几乎花费一整天的时间跟顾客对谈，他们没有时间、兴趣或训练去找出更好的方式以完成工作。在客户挽留团队中，则没有人对於不满意人数最少的部落客、愿意留存统计数据，且评量哪种客户挽留技术最佳。他们漠不关心、不够敏慧、手中没有足够资讯、而且身陷於日常正规的工作中。

As a manager it's your job to figure out a system. That's Why You Get The Big Bucks.

身为管理者，找出并建造这样的系统是你的责任，这也是你领那麼多薪水的原因。

If you read a little bit too much Ayn Rand as a kid, or if you took one semester of Economics, before they explained that utility is not measured in dollars, you may think that setting up simplified bonus schemes and Pay For Performance is a pretty neat way to manage. But it doesn't work. Start doing your job managing and stop feeding your chickens kopecks.

假若你幼时读了太多Ayn Rand（译注：她的哲学和小说里强调个人主义的概念、理性的利己主义、以及彻底自由放任的资本主义，请参阅维基百科）的书，或者修习一个学期的经济学（老师还没解释无法用金钱量测效用），你也许会认为设立简单的红利计画，用钱来换效率是通往管理最简单的路。可惜这是行不通的。开始做你的管理工作，并停止用戈比餵你的小鸡们吧。

“Joel!” you yell. “Yesterday you told us that the developers should make all the decisions. Today you're telling us that the managers should make all the decisions. What's up with that?”

「约耳！」你叫道，「昨天你告诉我们应该允许开发者去做所有的决定，今日_你又告诉我们管理者应该做所有的决定，这到底是怎麼回事？」

Mmm, not exactly. Yesterday I told you that your developers, the leaves in the tree, have the most information; micromanagement or Command and Control barking out orders is likely to cause non-optimal results. Today I'm telling you that when you're creating a system, you can't abdicate your responsibility to train your people by bribing them. Management, in general, needs to set up the system so that people can get things done, it needs to avoid displacing intrinsic motivation with extrinsic motivation, and it won't get very far using fear and barking out specific orders.

恩，并不是这样，昨日我告诉你，你的开发人员拥有最多的资讯，微管理或以军事化管理法下达你的命令仅会造成非最佳化的结果。今日我要告诉你的是当你建造一套系统时，你不能放弃你的责任，仅仅贿赂你的手下而不是训练他们。一般来说，管理需要的是建立一套完整的系统好让人们能做好工作，要极力避免以外在动机取代内在动机，且不需要使用恐惧或大吼大叫来下达指令。

Now that I've shot down Command and Control management and Econ 101 management, there's one more method managers can use to get people moving in the right direction. I call it the Identity method and I'll talk about it more tomorrow.

到目前为止，我已经说明了军事化管理法和利诱管理法，接着还有一种管理法可以用来引领人们朝正确的方向移动，我称之为认同法，明日将会做更详细说明。